When a divorced parent disses an ex in front of a child, the kid gets caught in a tug-of-war. But that's not all. In extreme cases, poisoning a child's mind against a parent can cause a mental illness, according to an Aurora, Ont.-based group called the Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome.
At an upcoming conference in Montreal, the CSPAS is calling for the syndrome's inclusion in the first complete revision since 1994 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - a.k.a. the psychiatric bible - due for publication in May, 2013.
The controversial term, coined by psychiatrist Richard Gardner in the 1980s, describes the hatred and rejection a child directs toward a "target parent" in response to indoctrination by the other parent, who usually has custody.
Parental alienation causes a ripple effect throughout the family, according to CSPAS founder Joseph Goldberg. "This affects grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends - all of them thrown out when a child rejects a parent," he told the Associated Press.
Darrel Regier, vice-chair of the task force drafting the DSM-V manual, said the syndrome is hotly debated in the psychiatrist community.
"We're gotten an enormous amount of mail - more than any other issue."
Critics dispute whether a parent can brainwash a child into alienating the target parent. The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, a non-profit independent scientific organization based in Baltimore, Md., calls the syndrome a "pseudoscientific theory."
But in 2008, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that a 13-year-old boy whose father had mounted a smear campaign against his mother could be flown against his will to a U.S. facility that "deprograms" children who suffer from parental alienation, the Globe and Mail reported.
Judging by the panel of psychologists, family lawyers and children's rights advocates gathering for the CSPAS conference in Montreal, the movement to recognize the syndrome as a real disorder could be gaining steam.
So much for the "good divorce."
Should children of warring parents be diagnosed as mentally ill?